Read Book

Chapter 7: Zen Is Love

This is an old habit. A man of understanding simply knows, there is no question, no answer. If you are still asking that means you have not found it.

He says:

Ask yourself, “What is my own Mind?”

There is no need. You are it. Experience it. Who are you questioning? Do you think anybody else will answer it? You can taste the sweetness of a fruit, you can smell the fragrance of a flower, but you cannot say what it is exactly in words. And this is a far deeper realm.

.with an intense yearning to resolve this question.

There is no question anymore. It is just his old habit, his old mind - the mechanical mind, which goes on repeating his old scholarship days.

This is called “training” or “practice.”

Once you see your self-nature, there is no practice and no training, or any desire for truth or thirst for realization. In the assembly of masters, he will look such a novice if he says,

This is called “training” or “practice” or “desire for truth” or “thirst for realization.”

If you have realized, there cannot remain any thirst for realization. Just drink a glass of pure water - which is difficult to find in Pune!

Existence plays strange games. It has made this place to awaken you, but it has no qualifications for it. If you drink even the polluted water of Pune, your thirst will be gone. You may have amoebas - that is another thing, not at all a concern of Zen. I have gone through the whole literature of Zen; they never talk of amoebas. But you know that you have to pass through the amoebas before you can reach to truth and become a buddha. You have to suffer amoebas. It is a new kind of hindrance imposed on the potential buddhas.

Gautam Buddha will be in difficulty. He will have to be hospitalized because he will not know anything of amoebas. This is a great specialty of Pune. But it is good; it wakes you up, it keeps you aware. It helps you to become a watchful consciousness. Avoid amoebas!